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Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

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Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#541

Post by astrange »

foo_barrio wrote: post #376
jorvi wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, biology is also against them. Somewhere between 25-30 years of age, your hearing already dips 17KHz.

I am almost 40 and can easily hear pure ones over 17khz but can't differentiate pure noise with or without anything above 13khz. Right around 18.5khz there's a sharp falloff on pure tones no matter how much I pump the volume. I use a loudness meter that shows me the freq spectrum to confirm that my speakers and headphones are producing a pure constant tone. On the tests at: " https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_fre…

Beyerdynamic headphones have a lot of fake detail (actually sibilence) that comes from echoes at high frequencies as well as their treble tuning. It makes songs mastered for radio sound more detailed in the same way a sharpness filter would work on images.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#542

Post by knoebber »

stingraycharles wrote: post #518
blackearl wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss what.cd Despite what anyone thinks about music piracy, what.cd had hands down the best music organization I've ever seen. I wish they had just dropped the torrents and kept the indexing features

Yeah good times, I’m nostalgic about managing my own music collection using directory structures, everything consistent and well-organized. Tagging metadata using musicbrainz, listening with foobar2000. Nowadays I’ve been sucked into the Spotify vacuum because of convenience, but I do miss out on more obscure music. And I have no idea how to find that, except from sites like SoundCloud and mixcloud, but their UX is h…

Bandcamp is great for this. You can buy albums from indie artists and download in your preferred format, DRM free.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#543

Post by Wowfunhappy »

crazygringo wrote: post #243
Someone1234 wrote: post #46

This is included/no additional cost which is fantastic. I do wonder if in the longer term if Apple's Spatial Audio with "dynamic head tracking" isn't the next 3D TVs/3D Content i.e. a gimmick. Taking traditional multi-source audio (Dolby/Atmos/etc) and jamming it into stereo is old tech, it doesn't work particularly well but is cheap to make/consume, thus mostly harmless. The new Spatial Audio is using gyroscopes to…

> Either you keep your head stationary and get the non-Spatial Audio sound (i.e. what they optimized for 90%+ of their audience) I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Using Spatial Audio on my AirPods Pro is insanely better, and still very much spatial, even without actively moving my head. First, the sound appears to be coming from outside of my head, rather than between my ears -- no "headphone fatigu…

Does anyone happen to know of a non-headphone-specific solution for this, which actually does a good job? It doesn't need to work when I move my head, neither does the Virtual Barbershop[1] and yet the effect on my run-of-the-mill earbuds is still incredible.

I'm open to little hardware boxes, software that modifies my computer's audio as it plays, a filter for ffmpeg, etc, as long as I can use whatever headphones I want and the spatial effect is high quality.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#544

Post by astrange »

numpad0 wrote: post #333
objclxt wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re actually pretty great, lossless CDs aren't lossless unless the material was recorded at or below 16 bit/44.1kHz. You can argue whether the difference is perceptible - some blind studies suggest not - but this fact is what led to a variety of semi-obscure audiophile disc formats that offered higher sampling rates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD ).

OT but since there are tons of professionals and audiophiles here - do anyone notice what can only be called CD artifact? There seems to be something "wrong" with CD that no other formats has, digital or analog.

Bits are bits. Maybe your CD player is scratched.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#545

Post by nitrogen »

andybak wrote: post #180
marcan_42 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MP3 with a good compressor and reasonable bitrate has repeatedly shown to be indistinguishable from uncompressed. With most samples, yes. The issue, as I said, is that psychoacoustic codecs are basically heuristic by definition, and so you can pretty much always find counterexamples. It's possible to say 320kbps MP3 is indistinguishable from uncompressed for most samples; it is not possible to say it is indistingui…

> it is not possible to say it is indistinguishable for all samples, present and future. Are there likely to be real-world cases where this happens - and the effect is detrimental enough to actually matter to anyone? Surely we're debating "when is it good enough for anyone sane and reasonable?" not "when could a hypothetical oracle be fooled 100%"?

I've commented in the past about a song that is annoyingly altered in 320k MP3: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#546

Post by krapht »

hiq wrote: post #380
ksec wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Key point would be, could you hear any difference in those test? If you could, then yes there is a quality differential, rather you got it right or wrong may be subject to taste. But at least we established there are differences. But when we say 128Kbps are sort of CD Quality or CD being no-difference to 320Kbps mp3, they generally refers to vast majority of consumers, not audio experts. I think most cons…

> I am wondering if there is a market for an even cheaper Music Streaming Services that target lower quality, 128Kbps music. If you control the client and are able to update it, I think you're better off switching to opus or similar. 96kbps opus is actually quite good for music already: https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Opus#Music_encod... I guess the question then is whether there's a market for 48kbps opu…

Mobile data is quite expensive in many parts of the world. Quality is just one factor.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#547

Post by astrange »

krrishd wrote: post #496
squeaky-clean wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binaural audio recordings are usually made with a Binaural microphone that records sound in a similar configuration to how human ears work. Or they're just synthesized directly as a stereo signal (that's usually how those "binaural beats" music is made). They're nothing more than a stereo file, and the audio has just been recorded in a certain way that mimics the human ear and head. This is why the virtual surround s…

TIL, thanks for the explainer.

The most important thing about spatial audio in AirPods is that they have head tracking, and so sound will appear to be coming from the same places if you move your head around. It doesn't work nearly as well without that.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#548

Post by nitrogen »

objclxt wrote: post #96
tobyhinloopen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plastic shiny disks that are DRM free. They’re actually pretty great, lossless, and no monthly fees. They are called _Compact Discs_ and you can get them pretty cheap these days!

> They’re actually pretty great, lossless CDs aren't lossless unless the material was recorded at or below 16 bit/44.1kHz. You can argue whether the difference is perceptible - some blind studies suggest not - but this fact is what led to a variety of semi-obscure audiophile disc formats that offered higher sampling rates ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD ).

If the original has a SNR less than 96dB (120dB effectively with shaped dithering), and no frequencies above 20kHz, then CD is lossless.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#549

Post by astrange »

mlacks wrote: post #159

Its too bad that Sony - among others - have been doing their own interpretation of this for a long time, but don:t have the marketing budget or presence of mind in the broader market for people to notice. The Apple machine (i use an iPhone and M1 mini - love them) is just so OP Sony 360 Reality Audio https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/what-is-sony-360-reality-au...

Sony and the other Japanese companies have been busy committing audio crimes by claiming their products are "Hi-Res Audio certified", which means nothing except they want you to replace everything, so you shouldn't encourage them.

Re: Apple Music Announces Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio

#550

Post by astrange »

verytrivial wrote: post #160

> For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz. Wow, I can finally justify upgrading my iPhone charging cable to gold plated, low-oxygen wires.

A good upgrade would be putting carpets everywhere or setting up your smart home so you can turn off the fridge so the compressor sound won't interfere with your speakers.
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